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Quotes

It is a certain sign of a wise government and proceeding, when it can hold men’s hearts by hopes, when it cannot by satisfaction.

—Francis Bacon, 1625

All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.

—Al Smith, 1933

Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts.

—Jeremy Bentham, c. 1832

There is no method by which men can be both free and equal.

—Walter Bagehot, 1863

An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.

—James Russell Lowell, c. 1865

I am invariably of the politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep.

—George Borrow, 1843

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.

—Paul Valéry, 1943

O citizens, first acquire wealth; you can practice virtue afterward.

—Horace, c. 8 BC

I am no courtesan, nor moderator, nor tribune, nor defender of the people: I am myself the people.

—Maximilien Robespierre, 1792

Every communist must grasp the truth: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

—Mao Zedong, 1938

It is impossible to tell which of the two dispositions we find in men is more harmful in a republic, that which seeks to maintain an established position or that which has none but seeks to acquire it.

—Niccolò Machiavelli, c. 1515

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

—Shimon Peres, 1995

Politics is the art of the possible.

—Otto von Bismarck, 1867